ATLANTA— I read an interesting article today in the New York Times. It looks to me like Barack Obama’s final plan for Iraq might end up looking somewhat similar to George W. Bush’s plan. I guess what else can you expect from a man who picked George Bush’s defense secretary to be his own. What else is interesting from the article is that his anti-war base hasn’t started to protest too loudly yet.
Barack Obama is surprising me. I thought for sure he would sense a mandate for his more radical plans. Now it appears from this article that he is going to be following the George Bush plan by taking a measured approach to withdrawing troops, based on circumstances on the ground.
In explaining his strategy for the war effort in the New York Times article, Mr. Obama said “I believe that 16 months is the right time frame, but… I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders.” This is a far cry from early July, when he said, “My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war.”
What’s more amazing to me though, is that 70-80% of Americans are supportive of Mr. Obama, despite his backtracking on his original plans for Iraq (which remains a highly unpopular war). I guess it is not the policy so much as the person advocating the policy. If you talked to hard-core Obama supporters, they would probably say his listening to commanders on the ground is a practical, wise thing to do. Not so if you asked them about George W. Bush following the same strategy.
In the end, I’m glad Mr. Obama is taking a more reasonable approach to Iraq (or that he seems to be, thusfar). But I think him spurning his anti-war base is going to burn him someday.
TennesseePaul
Stephen VanNuys
Brooklyn Daniel
The Freedom Thinker
WHAT?!?!? You mean our troops won’t all be home or in Afganistan within 16 months. Don’t tell me Obama lied he’s our savior. He is supposed to save us from the war, our economic problems, and a bad environment.
I will not listen to your RIGHT WING lies about Obama. He’s not just any politician he’ll save us just wait and see. Health care, auto industry, economy, education, etc. he’ll save us!!!
How dare you post the lies of a right wing ultra conservative newspaper controlled by a bunch of New York city jews.
How can you look in the mirror in the morning after slandering our President?
Ha! How dare you accuse me of slander!
Yeah – Obama is surprising me here. We’ll wait and see what happens. But if he does follow a much more measured approach to getting us out of there that includes a consideration of circumstances on the ground, then I will be much happier with his performance. We have done extremely well to get violence down to now all-time lows and I think it would completely foolish for him to ruin that.
As for the New York Times being an ultra conservative newspaper- ha! Definitely a tongue-in-cheek statement there.
1945 – WWII – Fast Forward to 2008 – US is still in Germany and Japan, as well as the fact that most of the island nations are now US territories.
Mid-1950s – Korean War – Fast Forward to 2008 – US is still in Korea militarily.
Vietnam War – We got out. Only one I have seen in recent history.
Iraq War Part Deux (circa 2003) – We are there, we will always be there as long as we are concerned about foreign oil and we try to play the game of meddling there.
George Washington said it best – I have to paraphrase “avoid foreign wars and conflicts”.
The only way to be Constitutional in any of our dealings would be to pull them from all of these areas. Military is for national defense, not empire building. If you are going to empire build at least be effective at it and rape the country for cheap oil, German chocolate, and tasty kim chi. Just my thoughts.
Being serious now.
I don’t think we empire build. We don’t try to mesh cultures or force cultures on them. How can we be considered empire builders at all?
We don’t take their resources, we don’t force our culture or government on them, and we don’t expand the size of our country.
We stopped building our empire once we’d swindled the Mexican’s out of the southwest and relegated the Indian’s to little ripoff territories.
But this comes to another fear, could we swing back from a socialism mentality if it bankrupts us to a empire building more fascist mentality in 10-20-30 years?
I’m not sure about this fascist uprising you keep bringing up, Freedom Thinker. What makes you think there is a big fascist streak undergirding the society?
As for the empire building per BMM, not sure I agree we’re an empire builder either. In fact, I think that if we were thrown in the category of great “empire builders,” then we would easily be the most benevolent, for many of the reasons Freedom Thinker gives. We’re not perfect by any stretch and I’m not condoning everything we’ve done. But our work in Germany and Japna is really good. In fact, for all its ills, I think long-term our work in Iraq will be viewed favorably. We could have left the place in a smoldering heap after we realized we had made a mistake on the initial intelligence. I remain convinced we did the morally correct thing by staying and helping them find some stability before leaving. And I’m glad we have not tried to pilfer their oil, etc.